Catherine Kuehn is one of the most impressive people I’ve met in Redmond. A whole new audience will get to meet her this week at the Bend Film Festival.

I connected with Catherine back in November 2022 and wrote a feature about her that ran in the Spokesman. At the time, she was 94 years old and gearing up to set a weightlifting record for her age group — 104 pounds of steel pulled clean off the mat.

Her story caught a little buzz. It was republished in Bend and in other Oregon newspapers. A national magazine picked it up. Readers got excited to root for Catherine, who was building back her strength after losing her beloved husband and being left isolated by COVID.

Catherine is now 95 and her weightlifting journey is still going strong. Portland-area filmmakers Cecilia Brown and Winslow Crane-Murdoch spent time with Catherine over the past year to document the highs and lows of that journey. The couple produced a 15-minute short film titled ”Strong Grandma,” which has now been accepted to numerous film festivals across the country.

The film will be shown twice in Bend as part of a series of shorts, first at 4 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 13 and then again at 12:45 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 14. Both showings are at Open Space Event Studios.

According to Brown, “Strong Grandma” will later be shown in Washington, D.C., in Cleveland and in the Austin Film Festival, among many others.

Cecilia is an old classmate of mine who has done wonderful, heartaching work for This American Life and has had her films play at the prestigious Tribeca Film Festival. Winslow is a talented documentarian in his own right, having done his own award-winning work. I figured they’d do Catherine right in telling her story.

I won’t give away the ending to “Strong Grandma” but you’ll definitely be lifted by the piece. I know Catherine is pumped up about the film and plans to attend the Oct. 13 show. I’ll be there, too.

If you’re a long time Redmondite who remembers the Kuehns fondly, feel free to meet us in Bend when Catherine’s story graces the big screen. It’ll be a fitting tribute to Redmond’s strongest grandma.

What else are we up to?

New reporter Joe Siess is pumping out a bunch of good stuff in his first days on the job. His first stories run the gamut from a fire levy that will go before Redmond voters next month to interviews with Heaven Can Wait 5k finishers. One story that has people talking is the fallout from the Cascade Equinox Festival, which brought a lot of folks to town for what many felt was a successful first edition of the festival. But others around town lamented the music and noise that went past 4 a.m. each morning of the festival.

These are the kinds of local news stories you won’t get anywhere else. To help keep the Spokesman reporting on local issues and adding more local reporters, consider purchasing a subscription — either for digital access or home print delivery. Call 541-923-1370 or go to redmondspokesman.com and we’ll get you signed up at an affordable price. That’s the best way to support our work, have more stories to read, and stay informed about your community.

— Tim Trainor is editor of the Redmond Spokesman.